It’s a technical marvel when you take into consideration they fit this entire game onto a N64 cartridge. In a world where Nintendo was giving you the bare minimum with their Mario releases, Rare gave you more than your moneys worth with this game. A 15-20 hour campaign, mini games and multiplayer.

Having said all that, the game has aged like shit and isn’t fun to play in 2025.

>>715640645 (OP)
And they think he gave a shit about DKC

>>715640645 (OP)
I agree. The fact the N64 can even remotely handle this game is a marvel. The fact they built it in 2.5 years when the levels are THAT fucking big is also a huge feat. But I'm not gonna pretend it's entirely fun to play. I'm the sort of person who likes backtracking and big levels and more complexity, I just don't think they handled it too well in this game most of the time. It is such a shame. It's a game full of absolutely wonderful ideas that usually just aren't executed super well.

The thing that sucks is that it would not take very much for Banjo-Tooie to go from a 6.5/10 game to a 10/10 game. I mean, I guess you'd have to change a lot but it's just a long list of really SMALL changes that would combined would absolutely skyrocket the quality of the game. It would be so easy to make a small list of changes that improves the experience immensely.

Rare's thing was always about running circles around Nintendo from a technical standpoint. They always found a way to push Nintendo hardware to its absolute limits. That being said clearly they needed each other. Nintendo needed Rare for navigating the treacherous waters of their technical hardware and Rare needed Nintendo to help put their engineering skills into more cohesively structured video games.

>>715641801
>Rare needed Nintendo
No, they needed money which is why Nintendo lost them to Microsoft.

They should keep backtracking, it's fucking cool and I don't care if people bitch & whine about it. But handle it better.

>for every level, you can always 100% everything on the first visit, including 10/10 Jiggies. Casual players can just do this, and move on without needing to worry.
>but there is one exception. There is one collectable that is EXCLUSIVELY found via backtracking. Either a special type of Jiggy, or some other mcguffin that is not a Jiggy.
>They are 100% optional, and you can never collect any of them without backtracking/cross-world bullshit. They are much more complex to obtain than a Jiggy, for players that truly enjoy going the extra mile. 2-5 of them per world.

I don't know what the mcguffin would actually do, but you get the idea. Make backtracking OPTIONAL and spell it out very clearly. If you make it so all the backtracking is tied to one type of collectable, that instantly tells the player what they can or cannot do on the first visit. They would KNOW that if they see a Jiggy they CAN get it now, but if they see the mcguffin they have to come back later. Make backtracking MORE complex but also 100% optional, that's how it should be.

Am I the only person alive on this planet who likes cloud cuckooland. I never heard anyone say anything positive about it. Yeah central cavern is annoying but I like everything else about it